One of the first 'liberal' Westerns that emerged tentatively in the 1950s, films showing that Indians weren't just bloodthirsty savages but peoples with their own culture and humanity. In making this ethical breakthrough, Wellmann doesn't reject the traditional, Fordian Western that had relegated the Native American to a whooping menace; instead, he embraces it. Like Ford's films, 'Missouri' is a history lesson, a tribute to the pioneers who 'tamed' America, 'giants' as the narrator calls them, the camera duly recording the suitably vast sky as a Wagnerian backdrop for these men.
'Missouri' records the development of a UNITED States, and not only does the film bring together a melting pot of different nationalties - Americans, Indians, Scots, French (who provide the kind of knockabout, Fordian 'humour' usually reserved for the Irish) etc., with their own tongues, stories, music etc. - but also a series of structural opposites (man/woman; nature/civilisation, capitalism, language) to create a national allegory of cohesion. Even the past and the future are brought together - the narrator tells of great doings in the past, stretching back at least as far as Waterloo, the Old World; but it is also his story, the tale of his birth, itself the literal and allegorical fruit of racial togetherness, the white man and red woman, even if the cheerful narration does sound conventionally WASPish.
Of course, you can't create without destroying, and, as in all those folk tales and myths that express the primal hopes and fears of a people, the evil spirits have to be exorcised, in this case the renegade Indian Iron Shirt, who has the nerve to equate the white man's convenient desire for peace and mutual help with the loss of his own land. We shouldn't expect miracles in 1951; 'Missouri' is only as liberal as its times will allow it - only those Others that accept the White way of life are welcome. Although Mitchell and Kamiah seem to engage in a reciprocating process of teaching and initiation, it is Kamiah who is infantilised, who is brought back to her grandfather, who is put across her husband's lap and smacked for disobedience, i.e. for following her own instincts and customs.
Iron Shirt, rightly hostile to a people who only see the awesome beauty of the Missouri landscape for the money it can make them, is demonised. The birth of the child is linked to the natural surroundings he is heir to; when Iron Shirt tries to kill him, his transgression is clearly unnatural, just as his unwillingness to see the white point of view and give in. In a world where translators (hence communication, conciliation) are the true currency of progress, Iron Shirt is a man of action and physical signs, not to be trusted.
The film feels like a civic lecture, made to be shown to schoolchildren to teach them tolerance and the great American way. But Wellman has directed some of the most sombre Westerns ever made ('The Ox-Bow Incident', 'Yellow Sky'), where American progress has fatally turned in on itself, and the bright colours and cheerful tone here are deceptive. As if to warn us, he uses his characteristic montage zoom, whereby his camera pulls back from a composition, not by a zoom, but by cutting backwards at different angles from it, creating an eerie, distancing effect.
The climax in the woods, as Mitchell fights Ironside, has a clear symbolic purpose, but it is the most chilling in the film, with no music. To root out the savage, Mitchell himself must become savage, using the Indian's tools to destroy him. He has become destructive and can no longer take part in the forging of a community, from which he voluntarily expels himself. In this story of nation, community and unity, this breach of withdrawal is troubling, and marks the film as a first step in the direction of the traditional Western's apotheosis, 'The Searchers'.
'Missouri' records the development of a UNITED States, and not only does the film bring together a melting pot of different nationalties - Americans, Indians, Scots, French (who provide the kind of knockabout, Fordian 'humour' usually reserved for the Irish) etc., with their own tongues, stories, music etc. - but also a series of structural opposites (man/woman; nature/civilisation, capitalism, language) to create a national allegory of cohesion. Even the past and the future are brought together - the narrator tells of great doings in the past, stretching back at least as far as Waterloo, the Old World; but it is also his story, the tale of his birth, itself the literal and allegorical fruit of racial togetherness, the white man and red woman, even if the cheerful narration does sound conventionally WASPish.
Of course, you can't create without destroying, and, as in all those folk tales and myths that express the primal hopes and fears of a people, the evil spirits have to be exorcised, in this case the renegade Indian Iron Shirt, who has the nerve to equate the white man's convenient desire for peace and mutual help with the loss of his own land. We shouldn't expect miracles in 1951; 'Missouri' is only as liberal as its times will allow it - only those Others that accept the White way of life are welcome. Although Mitchell and Kamiah seem to engage in a reciprocating process of teaching and initiation, it is Kamiah who is infantilised, who is brought back to her grandfather, who is put across her husband's lap and smacked for disobedience, i.e. for following her own instincts and customs.
Iron Shirt, rightly hostile to a people who only see the awesome beauty of the Missouri landscape for the money it can make them, is demonised. The birth of the child is linked to the natural surroundings he is heir to; when Iron Shirt tries to kill him, his transgression is clearly unnatural, just as his unwillingness to see the white point of view and give in. In a world where translators (hence communication, conciliation) are the true currency of progress, Iron Shirt is a man of action and physical signs, not to be trusted.
The film feels like a civic lecture, made to be shown to schoolchildren to teach them tolerance and the great American way. But Wellman has directed some of the most sombre Westerns ever made ('The Ox-Bow Incident', 'Yellow Sky'), where American progress has fatally turned in on itself, and the bright colours and cheerful tone here are deceptive. As if to warn us, he uses his characteristic montage zoom, whereby his camera pulls back from a composition, not by a zoom, but by cutting backwards at different angles from it, creating an eerie, distancing effect.
The climax in the woods, as Mitchell fights Ironside, has a clear symbolic purpose, but it is the most chilling in the film, with no music. To root out the savage, Mitchell himself must become savage, using the Indian's tools to destroy him. He has become destructive and can no longer take part in the forging of a community, from which he voluntarily expels himself. In this story of nation, community and unity, this breach of withdrawal is troubling, and marks the film as a first step in the direction of the traditional Western's apotheosis, 'The Searchers'.